The subject disclosure generally relates to instant messaging services, and, in particular, to providing integrated instant messaging functionality with respect to social groups at a social networking site.
Users of social networking sites may create associations with one another. Such user associations may be defined on a user-to-user basis, or as a group of users associated through membership within a group. A user may create social groups including one or more contacts to organize his/her associations. The social groups may be additionally used to control distribution of messages and content to contacts of the user. Various social networking sites further provide instant messaging functionality allowing a user to communicate with his/her contacts. The instant messaging functionality allows a user to communicate with contacts by selecting contacts from a contact list. The user may further communicate with more than one user using a group instant messaging function by adding users to an instant messaging session. However, the instant messaging functionally is independent from the other actions performed with respect to a social group and the contact list does not provide any indication of the contact groups associated with each contact.
Thus, it may be desirable to provide the user with a more effective way of communicating with contacts organized into social groups using an instant messaging service.